I was on a high! I was so excited to have been diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder because finally someone understood what it was like... and it's not my fault.
I joyfully went to the pharmacy, script in hand. About 30 minutes later, I got a call from the pharmacy saying my insurance had refused to fill the script.
I won't get into details, it makes me stressed just thinking about. Long story short: Make sure to get pre-approved by insurance and jump through the many, many hoops that they put up including making your doctors work overtime for you.
So here is the thing, as I worked my tail off to get this moving, sorted and organized, I realized the irony. Here I am, fighting for a medication to help me with ADD which ultimately will help me to handle these sort of situations better. Seriously!?!
ADD/ADHD, Emotion and Frustration:
The (whole) life of someone who has ADD/ADHD is incredibly frustrating. No matter how hard you try, you often can't do things that other people would say are "easy" or things that you "just have to do". In order to do anything which a) requires prolonged attention and/or b) is boring/uninteresting/hard, you have to work up emotions.
That's right. There is a whole bunch about how our pre frontal cortex doesn't work, and that someone with ADD tried to "just do it", we have to find motivation from the emotion centers in our brains.
This is the image that my doctor used to tell me about this...
The experience of trying to get my medication was a perfect example of this. I worked up the emotions: Determination, frustration, a little anger, and some stubbornness to make the countless phone calls, keep track of the information, and be able to speak with confidence. And then, I crashed. Totally crashed. We're talking high level breakdown.
The problem with using emotions to drive you is that you can't just turn them off and on. The problem with ADD is that you have no other choice than to use emotions to motivate you, because your brain doesn't work like everyone else. Otherwise, you might easily spend the whole day watching Netflix while starring at your very messy room which you really want to clear, but you're too exhausted to work up the emotions needed to clean it.
I did end up getting my meds, but more on that in the next post.
I joyfully went to the pharmacy, script in hand. About 30 minutes later, I got a call from the pharmacy saying my insurance had refused to fill the script.
I won't get into details, it makes me stressed just thinking about. Long story short: Make sure to get pre-approved by insurance and jump through the many, many hoops that they put up including making your doctors work overtime for you.
So here is the thing, as I worked my tail off to get this moving, sorted and organized, I realized the irony. Here I am, fighting for a medication to help me with ADD which ultimately will help me to handle these sort of situations better. Seriously!?!
ADD/ADHD, Emotion and Frustration:
The (whole) life of someone who has ADD/ADHD is incredibly frustrating. No matter how hard you try, you often can't do things that other people would say are "easy" or things that you "just have to do". In order to do anything which a) requires prolonged attention and/or b) is boring/uninteresting/hard, you have to work up emotions.
That's right. There is a whole bunch about how our pre frontal cortex doesn't work, and that someone with ADD tried to "just do it", we have to find motivation from the emotion centers in our brains.
This is the image that my doctor used to tell me about this...
The experience of trying to get my medication was a perfect example of this. I worked up the emotions: Determination, frustration, a little anger, and some stubbornness to make the countless phone calls, keep track of the information, and be able to speak with confidence. And then, I crashed. Totally crashed. We're talking high level breakdown.
The problem with using emotions to drive you is that you can't just turn them off and on. The problem with ADD is that you have no other choice than to use emotions to motivate you, because your brain doesn't work like everyone else. Otherwise, you might easily spend the whole day watching Netflix while starring at your very messy room which you really want to clear, but you're too exhausted to work up the emotions needed to clean it.
I did end up getting my meds, but more on that in the next post.
Thanks for explaining so well through real life examples how this affects you. It's truly helpful to grasp the day to day effects of ADD. Thanks for being so vulnerable and courageous. You're an inspiration to me... and I'm sure to many. xoxo
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